Of Death and Scarlet Robes
by Nearing Midnight
Summary: A dying nation reflects on endings and beginnings on the morning of an Empire's birth. Written for the "OCs in History" competition hosted by the Hetalia group on dA, the gist of which was to draw/write an APH OC interacting with a canon character during a pivotal moment in history; I chose to do the ancient Chinese province Qin interacting with a young China. One-shot, no romance.


**Historical notes can be found at the bottom.**

* * *

The sun was bright and blazing overhead, pounding down so heatedly that she could feel sweat beginning to pool beneath her heavy scarlet robes. She could not help but acutely notice the strain of her formal headpiece weighing down upon her neck, could not help but feel the ache forming in the small of her back from having stood stock-still for so many hours on end, could not help but sense the pounding in her temples throb stronger before abruptly receding like a ceaseless tide when the pain grew too intense, only further signifying the angry mutterings of her people and their resentment to her bosses over the state's current predicament. **(1)**

Yet despite the intense heat, despite the persistent ebbing of the wounds on her body she felt from all the recent wars, despite the intensely important ceremony occurring right before her eyes, all Qin could truly focus on was how absolutely tired she was at that moment.

She was tired of the heated, hate-filled glares that the defeated personifications within the room kept shooting at her; the fact that she, in the end, had won the battles for unification was little consolation as she resentfully fingered at the visible bandages peeking out from beneath her sleeves. She was tired of war, tired of bitter defeats and fruitless victories that came with prices far too high; she was tired of the unification, tired of the extreme lengths her leader had went to achieve his goal, from the almost careless way he had thrown away lives throughout the war to his oppressive policies that continued even today. Tired of the continued unhappiness of her people even as their nation had emerged the victor after all that turmoil; tired of the way she could only feel deep pity for the states she had defeated when she was supposed to feel nothing but hate towards them. Tired of all the times throughout the war when, wracked by the pains of battle, she had lain down and wished only to die, but had always awakened later on to find herself still alive; sore and groggy from all the deaths of her people but alive nonetheless, because the nation she represented still lived on. Tired of the way she was irrevocably linked to the state she personified, how at times she could not distinguish the difference between the emotions of her people and her own thoughts, even after all this time; how she always had to put the best interests of her civilians above her own desires, had to abide by the wishes of the government instead of hers, had to put the matter of the state over her own humanity, that she even had such selfish thoughts in the first place.

It had been five hundred long years since she had first came into being and Qin (how she absolutely _hated_ that title) was tired of nationhood.

She was brought out of her musings when someone purposely cleared their throat at the front of the room, and when she glanced up her boss was giving her a pointed glare. Only after she had inwardly sighed and raised her head higher, making an effort to look engaged, did he continue with the ceremony.

Qin had run over the events of the ceremony enough since the end of the war to know that next, the human envoys from the defeated states would be stepping forwards in order to honour their new leader; the personifications of the states themselves would only come forwards to give their pledges when the new personification for Zhongguo **(2)** was revealed **(3)**. Sure enough, one by one, the ambassadors from the defeated states came forwards and presented their gifts, all ranging from lavishly expensive silk cloth gleaming with the rich colours of yellow and red to treasures of gold, silver and precious stones. They were often accompanied with speeches of congratulations and admiration, and if any of the ambassadors were feeling anger or resentment at their predicaments, they hid their emotions well beneath eloquent words and cool exteriors.

They were all accepted with dignity on her boss's part, and at last, after giving a short spiel of thanks, came time for the "big reveal", as she had sardonically termed.

"Behold; your new empire!" her boss announced, and stepped aside to unveil the small boy dressed in too-large robes that had been standing, completely hidden, behind him. As her leader ushered him atop a suspended, heavily-decorated platform, little Wang Yao – the name that he had timidly given when first asked, and gods knew who had named him and how – blinked with huge dark amber-brown eyes as he stared around the room, as if confused as to why so many eyes were upon him in that moment.

Though Qin had seen him several times before ever since he had been found wandering the borders of the territory, starving and alone, she could not help but be constantly surprised at just how _tiny_ he was. That wasn't to mention the shocked ambassadors and personifications around her who had never seen the boy before, and soon enough gasps and angry mutterings began erupting around the room. When she thought about it, she supposed she could sympathize with the others; if having their nations conquered and being forced to unify wasn't bad enough, being forced to submit beneath such a fledgling empire would've been the metaphorical filling in the mooncake.

The concern of Wang Yao himself was already odd enough. After he had been found, the answers he had given to his interrogators had yielded endlessly strange results; when asked for his age, he had claimed to be over two thousand years old, and though further investigation had proved that, incredibly, he was a personification as well, no one could determine exactly what nation he personified. Qin would be lying if she claimed to not feel skepticism herself; a personification with no experience and the body of a child being asked to represent such a large landmass was practically a recipe for disaster.

The titters in the room eventually died down to mumbles after yet another sharp glance from her boss, and soon a resentful silence hung in the air. Now was time for the presentation of the representatives themselves to come forwards, and for the life of her she could not remember the order after this; she wondered briefly who would be stepping forwards first.

There was the briefest of pauses in the ceremony, the slightest breath of hesitation, before the state of Han, adorn in an exquisitely embroidered crimson _hanfu_ **(4)** that hung too loosely off her frail body, stepped forwards before Yao first and began reciting the necessary pledge in a dutiful voice that wavered only slightly at times. Han was a funny little thing, Qin mused; the only other female state personification among the seven of them, herself included, Han was the smallest (and unspoken weakest) nation of them all. With the body of a young girl hardly over twelve years of age, Han had existed as little more than a family branch of the much more powerful nation Jin and had barely been recognized as a nation of her own till only after Jin's violent downfall. She had only just begun building herself back up till the conquest of unification had abruptly hammered down her efforts. Taking over Han had been almost unnervingly easy, with the capital Zheng having been conquered in only a year; but then again, Qin supposed, Han had always been surrounded by immensely powerful nations and had little chance throughout her life of ever expanding her territory in order to gain more resources for her people. Her last leader had been put to death only five years before and Han was a nation now only in name; the fact that she hadn't faded away yet was near-miraculous and proved that Han was far more stubborn than Qin had originally thought. However, that hardly made the sight of the small personification wringing her too-thin wrists as she struggled to remember the next sentence any easier to watch.

The next state to come was the nation of Zhao, and though he moved forwards with the sureness of a trained soldier, the vehement, smoldering glare he sent her and the almost unnoticeable way he seemed to force himself to kneel down before a nervous-looking Yao spoke volumes of his willingness to be here. Qin could do nothing but watch as he, clutching with whitened knuckles at his bloodred warrior robes in his fury, forced out his vow of allegiance through gritted teeth. The conquest of Zhao had been a completely different matter entirely when compared to the conquest of Han and had resulted with some of the highest losses of life on both sides throughout the entire war **(5)** ; having started off as a state hardly stronger than Han, Zhao had quickly advanced in terms of both territory and military strength after he had gotten his new leader **(6)** and had grown from a frightened, scrawny boy to the fully grown fighter he was today (though that persona would likely not last too much long, now, Qin thought wryly) within the span of a few mere years. After allying with the state of Wei, he had risen to meet Qin's attacks with strong forces of his own, but the alliance had not lasted long and it had been terrible luck on Zhao's part when he was struck by an earthquake and severe famine in the two consecutive years following. Qin had seized his territory with relative ease after that.

(Now that she thought of it, Zhao, though he was her bitterest enemy, was likely also the one state she admired most for his selflessness, for despite the gruff outlook he constantly maintained, she knew that beyond the seemingly bloodthirsty outlook he was only constantly striving to forge a stronger nation in order to provide a better future for his people. She had not encountered the personification himself that many times before the unification and could only regret that they had not met under better circumstances.)

She kept up the façade of indifference as the rest of the states came to attention to give their vows, observing silently as nervous Wei stepped up, twisting the fabric of his rose-red traditional robes in his hands as he stuttered over his speech, before being replaced by the scholarly vermilion-adorned Chu who enunciated his words clearly, precisely and emotionlessly, as though they were all merely students being called up to the front of the class to recite the required reading they had been assigned. If one looked into his eyes, however, they would be able to see his dark orbs betray a sort of hopelessness in their depths, belied by his cool delivery.

It was around the time of Yan's presentation when Qin, whose mind had temporarily wandered away from the ceremony, abruptly noticed that all the nations in the room were wearing red when she compared her own scarlet robes to those of Qi's, who was standing beside her; the only exception to this was Yao, whose yellow raiment had been specially made to fit his small body. Red was normally considered a colour of luck and prosperity throughout all the states, but in this case the only image that came to mind was that of blood, be it bright red blood bubbling from a fresh wound to the dark, maroon stains that clung to unchanged bandages; though this, in a bit of a morbid way, was fitting, she supposed, given that it was only a matter of time before the seven states, herself included, would die.

For this was true; they were all going to die soon **(7)**. Nations, as a rule, were most certainly not humans no matter how much they looked and acted and tried to be them. They could not die – permanently, at least – from wounds, illness, or grief, and though they would feel the pain of it as acutely as any other human, they would keep living on, as long as their people lived and retained their culture and their sense of _unity_. And this was precisely how the seven of them would be dying; with the current ceremony of them pledging their allegiance, their territory, and their people to the little Yao standing before them, everyone now was essentially writing off their death certificates as they spoke. For how long would it take for the people to stop viewing themselves as the people of _Han_ , of _Wei_ , of _Qin_ , and begin to view themselves as being simply _Chinese_ , as one country united beneath a single land, a single name, and a single people? As their people began mingling with one another, they would soon lose their names, their culture, and their individuality and all of them would doubtlessly begin fading off one by one till there was only a fully-grown, unified Zhongguo standing in their wake.

And there was still the matter of the tidings of rebellion she could feel stirring up amidst her own people – though for how much longer she could still call them "her own" she knew not. If the loss of each their individuality was not enough to kill them, the looming uprising would be enough to tear her and the other states apart.

She was abruptly shot back to the present when her boss's sharp bark of " _Qin!"_ rang through the air, and she hurriedly stepped forwards to take Qi's place as he finished speaking. There was silence in the room; as the victor of the war, she was the last state to say her rites, as per request of her boss, who claimed it would show that even though all of them were being unified beneath her state, he wanted to emphasize that the true personification of the unified Zhongguo would be Yao in the end and all allegiances should be pledged to him. Whether this was because of her feminine status or not, she couldn't be entirely sure, though that didn't make her resentment of her boss any less as she stalked past him to take her place before Yao.

She was fully prepared to feel anger rise up in her gut the moment she stood before the nationless personification, fully prepared to have the words of the pledge be dragged from her lips unwillingly, but the moment she looked at Yao for the first time – really and truly looked right into his wide dark amber-brown eyes, until she was able to see the shiny unshed tears of confusion welling up in the corners – she could not bring it upon herself to feel irritation or bitterness of any sort.

She took a deep breath, began speaking the words of the vow: "I, the state of Qin, hereby pledge my lands and my people to the Empire of – "before she abruptly gave up and discarded her speech. Instead she knelt down till she was level to Yao and gently stroked his cheek, bringing his quivering chin up a little higher so that he could look her in the eyes.

"You are our legacy," she said quietly, ignoring the fact that her boss was blowing a fuse like a New Year's firecracker mere feet away from her, for these words were meant for Yao and for Yao alone. "Be it by our own will or not, we are leaving our responsibilities and our burdens for you alone to bear; the fates of our people rests in your hands."

She gave his hand a little squeeze, hoping to portray encouragement. "You are strong," she finished off. "We entrust the future of this country to you."

She hastily stepped back and straightened up after saying this, the words of the pledge tumbling easily out of her mouth, and once her boss had been placated, it was time for the ending of the ceremony, the one act that would truly bring them all together, sealing their destinies.

As one, the seven states bowed before the face of Zhongguo, a nameless nation no longer; however, before she bent her head Qin chanced a final glance at the small boy perched atop the heavily-decorated platform. Though his tears had stopped, he was still looking around a bit bemusedly, as if overwhelmed by all the attention, though his eyes stopped flicking about when they met hers. His bewildered look intensified even further if possible, as though the reborn nation had remembered Qin's words and was reflecting upon them, before his dark amber-brown orbs unexpectedly hardened and he stared down at her with a cool, almost detached look in his gaze. It was as though some remnant of his unlearned mind had understood the full weight of her words and was now acknowledging her...

It was at this moment when Qin abruptly realized just how _old_ Zhongguo truly was, despite the child-like outlook. Two thousand years was a long time, even for a nation, and for all her military power Qin knew she would personally never last as long as the small boy standing before her – even if the unification had never happened. After having spent so many years alone, forced to go through all his pains and miseries by himself, despite having not represented a full nation till now, he had undoubtedly experienced, underwent, and endured far more hardships than Qin could ever dream of.

It was this look of sheer maturity upon the youthful face of one who ought to have never suffered so much, who had not ever deserved to brave through so many years of agony, which caused a chill of respect - and the slightest hint of fear - to run down Qin's spine.

She shivered, then she smiled, looking up to meet Zhongguo's steady gaze – for she ached, and she was tired, and perhaps, after five hundred years, it was now time to pass her lands and people onto another. _There truly is hope for this country after all,_ she thought, bowing her head at last and giving herself up to fate.

* * *

 **Alright, history time!**

 **China, like many other countries, underwent a period of warring and confusion before coming to its eventual unification. Shortly before the time of this fic, Zhongguo (the Chinese name for China) was made up of seven main states; Qin (the largest and strongest, as well as the main character of this fic), Wei, Yan, Chu, Zhou, Han, and Qi. The original idea of unification was formulated by Ying Zheng, the leader of Qin at the time, and he promptly launched a series of military campaigns to take over the other six states in order to unify them beneath his name and the state. It took several years, but in the year 221 BC he changed his name to Qin Shi Huang, meaning first emperor given that he literally was the first emperor of unified China at the time, and launched the revolutionary Qin Dynasty, in which he implemented many new things into the newly unified system, which included introducing a shared currency and common system of measurement to be used amongst the people. The empire prospered for a short while before the people of "new" China, unhappy with the emperor's oppressive policies, rebelled against the leaders of the country and promptly launched the country into yet another long-ended war that eventually destroyed all semblance of the seven original main states from before unification.**

 **This whole matter, evidently, is an extremely pivotal moment in Chinese history, and though Qin Shi Huang's empire was short lived, it is one of the leading factors that helped shape the modern China we know today.**

 **I had always found the matter of APH China's age to be extremely strange to have been listed as four thousand years, given that Chinese history technically spans around five thousand years. Because of this, I guessed that Himaruya decided to leave the factor of the rather dubious Xia Dynasty, which doesn't have that much evidence to back up that it even existed in the first place, out of the matter of APH China's age. However, the above Chinese unification still didn't happen until a whopping**

 ** _two thousand years_ into Chinese history, so technically APH China should only be 2000 years old if the typical personification is "born" after unification of the country?**  
 **Then again, there are always exceptions (like APH America existing before his fifty states were unified), so I don't even know.**

 **For the sake of the story, I decided to have Wang Yao just... be there, assuming that he started existing shortly after people began living there in the land that makes up modern China today. My headcanon goes that Yao kind of just wandered around for two thousand years, never able to advance past a child-like state given the fact that he never really represented anything in particular and therefore couldn't "age" along with a nation (the things he could've went through in those two thousand years is even more fic-worthy material, but at this point I have no energy left to reflect upon it). My guess is that he was eventually found by Qin Shi Huang maybe shortly before he launched the campaign of unification, and perhaps after he found out that this mysterious little boy was just like the other personifications aside from the fact he didn't represent anything, it convinced him to take his idea of unification to the next level in order to formulate a country for the little guy to represent. Maybe he viewed Yao as a sign from the gods that unification was the right way to go? Who knows.**

 **I decided to make Qin the main character given that Qin Shi Huang was her boss and it would be interesting to see things from her perspective. I also decided to make her a female because I never write females nowadays and it'll be nice to have a bit of a change, and because I also wanted to explore how a female nation would act in that period of Chinese history, given gender roles at the time. I don't think I really got the chance to expand much on the latter, but meh. Maybe next time.**

 **Now for some historical notes:**

 _ **(1: Bosses)**_ **Qin's "bosses" evidently refer to Qin Shi Huang as well as the government at the time; I chose to stick with traditional Hetalia canon and simply referred to him and the government as the "bosses".  
** _ **"...the angry mutterings of her people and their resentment to her bosses over the state's current predicament..."**_ **Despite many of the groundbreaking changes the emperor implemented in the system, as I said before he was still a very strict leader and was considered cruel by many. Many people in Qin were unhappy with Qin Shi Huang and the government's oppressive policies and began seeking ways to overthrow the system. These rebels seized their chance to revolt following the death of Qin Shi Huang and the throning of his weak successor Qin Er Shi; this eventually led to the Dazexiang Uprising, heralding the beginning of the downfall of the short-lived yet influential Qin Dynasty.  
** _ **(2: The use of**_ _ **Zhongguo**_ _ **vs. China)**_ **The English name China didn't exist yet at the time. Of course, the whole fic is written with the assumption that they're all speaking Mandarin in the first place, but I decided to stick with** _ **Zhongguo**_ **in lieu of China to avoid any confusion.  
** _ **(3: The whole ceremony thing)**_ **The idea of having a ceremony for all the state personifications to pledge their territory/people/allegiance and whatnot to Yao is a completely made-up idea of mine in order to fit the story and the Hetaliaverse, though I did do my best to have the ceremony be run like a traditional formal Chinese ceremony, in which the ambassadors from the defeated states come bearing gifts to give to Qin Shi Huang in order to honour his new title and all that, given that in this era, if one state was allying/submitting to another state, this is the basic way the ceremony would be run.  
** _ **(4:**_ _ **Hanfu**_ _ **)**_ _ **Hanfu**_ **is the traditional dress of the Han Chinese people. Google it; they're all very pretty.  
** _ **(5: Changping)**_ _ **"...the conquest of Zhao ... Had resulted with some of the highest losses of life on both sides throughout the entire war."**_ **I had written this with the Battle of Changping in mind; the Battle of Changping, fought between Qin and Zhao during the campaign of unification in 260 BC, was one of the bloodiest battles throughout the entire war, in which the Zhao forces were all but annihilated by Qin's (400 000 killed when there were originally 450 000). Admittedly, this is more of Zhao's loss than Qin's, but it's true that the conquest of Zhao had heavy consequences on both sides.  
** _ **(6: King Wuling)**_ **King Wuling was the leader that whipped Zhao and its forces into shape, and his efforts were definitely effective - he ended up making Zhao the only state out of the six defeated states strong enough to actually have been able to face Qin.  
** _ **(7: Deaths of the states)**_ **Alright, if the explanation in the story itself wasn't clear enough, the following is a very elaborate headcanon that I saw being used in several fanfics that I liked, so bear with me for a moment, please:  
We all know nations can't die like normal humans; they can't get shot and killed, they can't get deathly ill and die (I am of the assumption that personifications **_**can**_ **get hurt and sick by natural and human means, only that they're able to recover from these ailments far quicker than normal humans if nothing has happened to their countries). My guess is that the only way nations can actually "die" - that is, either fade away or revert to a human-like state in which they can die through wounds/illness and such - is if they are dissolved and/or lose everything that makes them a nation - their people, their landmass, the sense of unity amongst the people, their culture, their title etc. Only after they lose everything that makes them a nation are they able to die.  
The wars of unification would've badly beaten down the seven states till they were in a state of severe weakness, and with the unification and all, it would've only been a matter of time before they lost their sense of individuality and began fading. However, in my version of this headcanon, the loss of individuality wouldn't have been enough to kill the states outright - it was the ensuing rebellion that completely ripped them apart. As I said before, the rebellion destroyed all that was left of the states from before, and that would've been enough to do them in.**

* * *

 **All the above, historical notes and all, was pretty much copy-and-pasted from my account on dA, with a few minor edits – you can view the story on my dA account under the username CatLover221.**

 **The gist of the competition was to write a story about a Hetalia OC interacting with a canon character in a very important moment of history – or a moment of history that is, at least, important to the characters in question.**

 **I don't usually write OC stories, so this was a fun experience. Being Chinese-Canadian myself, choosing to do something that pertained to Chinese history seemed fitting, and I hope I did it justice.**

 **I did a bunch of research about the unification of China in order to write this, as well as researching all the ancient Chinese provinces featured in this story. If you do have the chance, check out the Hetalia group on dA – you can see all the competition entries there, as well as the marvelous winning entries (seriously, I'm still reeling from the ingenuity of some of them).**

 **Thanks for reading, and have a great Valentine's Day! And a late happy Chinese New Year, too, now that I think of it.**

 **\- Nearing Midnight**


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